David Toole, a leading disabled dancer who performed a solo in the 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony, is to appear at ARC Stockton. He will play Dave in Stopgap Dance Company’s new work The Enormous Room, which has its premiere in Sadlers’ Wells’ Lilian Baylis Studio on 2nd and 3rd March and comes to ARC on 9th March.
Stopgap employs disabled and non-disabled artists who find innovative ways to collaborate and is committed to making discoveries about integrating disabled and non-disabled people through dance.
In The Enormous Room Dave’s wife Jackie has died, but he still sees her everywhere. She is lying in his bed, sitting at the kitchen table and laughing with their daughter Sam. Dave has withdrawn into the living room unable to let his memories go, but going is all that Sam can think about….
Toole is Dave and Sam is played by Hannah Sampson, a young dancer with Down’s syndrome who has received ten years of professional training with Stopgap Dance Company. They are joined by non-disabled dancers Meritxell Checa and Amy Butler who take the roles of Jackie as Dave’s wife and Sam’s mother respectively.
Lucy Bennett, Stopgap’s Artistic Director and the choreographer of The Enormous Room, chose to have two performers play Jackie to illustrate the subjective nature of memory.
Also in the cast are Cambodian wheelchair dancer Nadenh Poan plays Chock, a Puck-like presence, who orchestrates the collision between this world and the next, and Christian Brinklow who plays the role of Tom, appearing intermittently to offer his friend Sam a chance to escape sadness.
The Stockton performance, which starts at 7.00, is Pay What You Decide.